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$3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

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Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#411

Post by wallacoloo »

jtaft wrote: post #106
eric_cc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LUNA minted trillions of brand new tokens within the span of a day or so rendering the token worthless. This is due to the way LUNA was tied to the algorithmic stablecoin UST. It was a true ponzi. BTC's max supply is capped and the release schedule of new coins is fixed and predictable. There is no possible way that trillions of new bitcoins could suddenly be created.

Do you think the value of Bitcoin will go to zero due to lost private keys?

one usually hears the opposite argument: Bitcoin becomes more scarce as users lose their private keys. lost keys => smaller supply => higher price per unit. i can see the opposite argument though: lost keys => less desire to interact with bitcoin => lower demand => lower price per unit. so it might just be a wash.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#412

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

jimmydorry wrote: post #392
dmitrygr wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yup... https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/el-salvador-risks...

From the article, El Salvador has been cut off from financial markets by two of the ratings agencies that played a pivotal role in the corruption that caused the 2008 GFC to happen. Their reason for cutting El Salvador off is because their debt to GDP is approaching 87% (a fraction of what other countries have run up, especially due to COVID). The IMF (International Monetary Fund) which typically steps in to offer pr…

if bitcoin constitutes an insignificant portion of their activities, why would they oppose such a term?

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#413

Post by GaylordTuring »

jpmattia wrote: post #118
caymanjim wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real banks practice fractional-reserve banking, where they are required to hold a percentage of assets as cash or central bank deposits. It's well-regulated and diversified. It's audited. Individual account holders' deposits are insured (FDIC in the US). This is all well-known and understood and reliable. Runs can still happen, shady accounting practices can still happen, and sometimes banks fail. Sometimes they fail…

> They claim that 100% of the assets are backed by US dollar cash deposits. Still? (ie link?) All I see is: “All Tether tokens are pegged at 1-to-1 with a matching fiat currency and are backed 100% by Tether's reserves.” (link here: https://tether.to/en/transparency/ )

The fact that this comment is downvoted means that at least some people here doesn’t understand how to use the downvoting function. I think the comment highly contributed to the discussion by pointing out what Tether states today (and asking for more information if available). How is this not a constructive comment?

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#414

Post by iaw »

samatman wrote: post #341
snovv_crash wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luna crashed because people lost trust in it. The only reason people have trust in BTC is because other people have trust in it. If that ever changed, there is no actual use for a BTC, and they are thus intrinsically worthless. Fiat currency has the backing of a government. The government demands certain payments of this currency in order to own land, and also for some extra rights like mineral extraction, fishing li…

To be perfectly clear, you're claiming with a straight face that government issued currencies are stable because there will always be a buyer who needs to pay taxes? Any reasonable definition of stability precludes hyperinflation, we agree on that right?

Historically government backed currencies are are stable because they have two underlying components: an economy denominated in the currency and an implicit threat of force (e.g. standing militaries). It's one of the reasons the US dollar is the chief reserve currency around the world as well as the denomination in which oil is traded in.

You need dollars not because people have faith in them but because people have faith in the underlying institutions they represent. It's fine to claim you back bitcoin because you don't have faith in the traditional institutions but pretending that those institutions don't support dollars in a way that crypto/bitcoin isn't seems a little near-sighted.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#416

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

wallacoloo wrote: post #411
jtaft wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the value of Bitcoin will go to zero due to lost private keys?

one usually hears the opposite argument: Bitcoin becomes more scarce as users lose their private keys. lost keys => smaller supply => higher price per unit. i can see the opposite argument though: lost keys => less desire to interact with bitcoin => lower demand => lower price per unit. so it might just be a wash.

The former relationship wouldn't play out IRL, since there's no authoritative "lost bitcoin registry" to signal to buyers that the supply has effectively decreased

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#417

Post by low_tech_love »

vmception wrote: post #346
stingraycharles wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that it’s the plan, do they have any evidence (like transaction ids) that it actually happened? I haven’t followed this a lot but from what I gathered there’s not a lot of transparency around this. If so, why not?

There are transaction IDs to the exchanges There wont be transaction IDs after that because its not onchain You and the community could ask for an audit by an accounting firm like Deloitte, like the rest of the business world uses, itll come out a quarter or two from now leaving us all in exactly the same spot for now. The transparency expectations make almost no sense or lack inspiration.

The point is that, when all is said and done, we’re supposed to trust them that it’s alright. But wasn’t that supposed to be the exact problem that blockchains were supposed to fix, remove trust from the equation? Why is it that people are so willing to trust them all of a sudden? It is contradictory and seems to me like pure tribalism. In the lack of evidence either way, I think we should assume the worst, not the best. This is what would happen if the same thing was done by a non-crypto company who disappeared with the money.

P.S. If anyone ever reads/replies to this comment I can predict that the answer will be: “yeah but that’s what wall street does, so what” So what, first of all it actually isn’t, but let’s assume it is: people invest in blockchains with the promise of descentralized trustless, so this means the promise was broken, because at the end of the day the whole thing is actually supposedly backed by a centralized trust-based fund (which failed horribly even so). In case people wanted to invest in centralized trust-based funds they have a myriad of other options with actual security features in them, and not just “I promised to do the right thing, cross my heart”. Now tell me something: what would you call a company that disappears with US$ 2b and promises to do the right if it wasn’t crypto?

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#419

Post by vmception »

low_tech_love wrote: post #417
vmception wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are transaction IDs to the exchanges There wont be transaction IDs after that because its not onchain You and the community could ask for an audit by an accounting firm like Deloitte, like the rest of the business world uses, itll come out a quarter or two from now leaving us all in exactly the same spot for now. The transparency expectations make almost no sense or lack inspiration.

The point is that, when all is said and done, we’re supposed to trust them that it’s alright. But wasn’t that supposed to be the exact problem that blockchains were supposed to fix, remove trust from the equation? Why is it that people are so willing to trust them all of a sudden? It is contradictory and seems to me like pure tribalism. In the lack of evidence either way, I think we should assume the worst, not the b…

The blockchain removes the need for trust when the blockchain is involved completely and without obfuscation

The need for trust doesnt stay removed magically because someone in the blockchain space was involved

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#420

Post by anonu »

celestialcheese wrote: post #143
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 3.87% of Tether was backed by dollars: https://siliconangle.com/2021/05/13/tether-releases-reserve-... So it could drop pretty far.

That's a bit old - https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports Closer to 50% tbills and cash. All caveated with if you trust MHA Cayman auditors. The other 50% could be anything, and likely sketchy as they are chasing yield and extremely cagey about revealing anything about their holdings.

> The other 50% could be anything

Ferraris and Yachts

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